A Kiss in Winter Page 9

  “Don’t leave here again without your phone.”

  “The purpose of a truce is to cease all hostilities. That sounded hostile.”

  “Point taken.”

  Macie put her hand on the photo album Caroline had left on the kitchen table last night. She sighed softly. “Mom and Dad look so young.”

  Caroline moved to her side, smiling. “Yeah, they do, don’t they.”

  “Who’s the little boy?”

  “He was another foster kid. He was adopted a couple of weeks after I came to live with Mom and Dad.”

  “But not by Mom and Dad?” Macie asked.

  Caroline shook her head. “I don’t really remember the particulars. It must have been a distant relative or something.”

  Macie looked at Caroline and cemented their truce. “I’m glad you didn’t have distant relatives to take you away.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  As Macie left the room, Caroline’s gaze drifted to the Kentucky Blue calendar on the wall. Looking at the bright lights on the Ferris wheel, she imagined how scared Macie must have been stuck that high off the ground.

  Then she recalled Macie’s excited bounce when she’d come home—not appearing in the least traumatized. Yes, Macie had been stuck up there in the dark… with a boy she seemed infatuated with. Caroline shook her head; she didn’t want to go there.

  Glancing back at the newspaper, she paused. Sabotaged? She picked up the paper and read the single-column article:

  Authorities are investigating an apparent act of vandalism that trapped two local teenagers atop a Ferris wheel for over an hour at the county fair. Although shaken up, both teens were rescued without injury by a fire department ladder truck.

  Ray John Foster, operator of the ride, said he’d stepped away from the wheel briefly before he loaded the two teens for the last ride of the evening. There had been no indication of problems prior to the incident, which gave a dramatic shower of sparks before the ride ground to a halt. Mr. Foster said, “There’s no way this [the damage] happened by itself. Somebody sabotaged my ride. This is my livelihood. People shouldn’t mess with a man’s livelihood… Somebody could have been hurt.”

  Police have no leads at this time. They are requesting anyone who may have seen suspicious activity near the Ferris wheel to call the CrimeWatch hotline…

  What if someone had tampered with more than the ride’s power? The prospect of Macie being hurt by such a senseless act rocked Caroline’s stomach worse than her own ride on the Bullet. Mick’s comment about the safety of carnival rides seemed much more logical when a threat to Macie’s safety hit so close to home. Wasn’t it enough that she had to worry about horny teenage boys from California?

  Chapter 8

  Early Saturday morning, Mick walked out to his newly acquired silver Ford F150 pickup. Nighttime dampness still hung in the air. Dew beaded on the paint and windows like tiny spheres of possibility glistening in the new day. He loved the first hours after sunrise, when the day held nothing but potential, before little realities began to eat into a person’s hopeful nature.

  Even as he embarked on a venture he knew had little chance of a positive conclusion, he held close the birth of expectation that came with the rising sun.

  He got in the truck, the door handle cool and wet in his hand. Then he started the engine. With a flick of a lever, the windshield wipers swiped away hundreds of droplets; just like that, the gleaming possibilities were flattened and flung. He immediately thought of his father.

  He could shut off the engine and go back in the house. Wait for the phone to ring—make his father come to him. But that was a coward’s way—he’d done enough hiding. He put the truck in drive and pulled away from the house where Miranda Stockton had hidden from the world, fearing he wasn’t much different. Only, he wouldn’t hide. Not anymore.

  He drove down the lane and turned toward town, squinting against the rising sun. Steam curled off the winding road before him, slipping into the fog-filled ditches.

  After having shown his face at the fairgrounds, it was only a matter of time before somebody said something to one of his parents about seeing him. In fact, somebody might have made that call already: “Debra! You didn’t tell me Mick was in the market for cattle. When did he move back?… No, I’m not mistaken, we saw him last night at the fair…”

  Mick should have made this trip two days ago.

  Sometimes, like now, he wished he’d been blessed with an unremarkable “medium” appearance: medium brown hair, medium build, medium height. The kind of person who could pass three feet in front of you and not be noticed. The kind of person who reminded you of someone you went to high school with, but at the same time reminded you a little of your uncle Jim; easily misidentified. There was nothing medium about Mick—too tall, too broad, light hair from his Scandinavian ancestors; he stuck out in a crowd like a giraffe in a cattle herd.

  He normally preferred driving with an open window to air-conditioning, but he didn’t want to arrive at his parents’ house smelling like a puppy (his mother hated anything that smelled like the outdoors, except flowers), so he cranked up the AC. Even with the cold air blasting, his palms felt moist against the steering wheel. He told himself it was because of the high humidity, not nerves. Over the past years, he’d gotten real good at lying to himself.

  He pulled up in front of the house where he’d grown up. Nothing about this house on Chestnut Street had changed in his lifetime, or even his parents’ lifetimes, most likely. It was the same stately Italianate brick two-and-a-half story with a big porch and a wide side yard that it had been for over one hundred years. Unimaginative lace curtains still covered every long window, as they probably had from the day the first occupants moved in, shielding the interior from sun fading and keeping what went on inside those windows private from the world passing by.

  There was a perfect tree for a tire swing in that side yard, a giant sycamore with near-horizontal branches thicker than most trees’ trunks. But the Larsen children had grown up without tire swings. According to his mother, they made ugly black stains on clothing. According to his father, a tire swing would make the place look like white trash lived there.

  Mick often speculated on the benefits of being born to “white trash.” Then med school would have been a near impossibility; but farming… that would have been a respectable endeavor.

  Such thoughts made him feel disrespectful and ashamed, as if he didn’t appreciate the advantages his parents had provided him.

  He turned his back on those feelings as he got out of his truck and walked up to the front door. There was no way his father was going to take Mick’s decision to abandon his career any other way than as a slap in the face; Mick thumbing his nose at the privileges he’d been given. Even so, he held on to one of those glistening spheres of hope that once his father saw it was done and there was no going back, he would begin to accept.

  He didn’t begin to dream his father would ever understand.

  Mick paused at the front door. Ring the bell? Or walk in? He’d never in his life rung this doorbell. But he’d never kicked his dad in the teeth before either—and there was no getting around it; that’s what he was about to do.

  He rang the bell.

  His mother blinked in surprise when she opened the door, as if it took her a second to recognize it was her own son standing on the threshold. “Mick! Gracious, what are you doing here?”

  Mick stepped through the door and into his mother’s embrace. She was a tall woman, yet he still had to stoop to give her a hug. She squeezed him tight, patting him on the back. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You too, Mom.” When she released him, he stepped back. “Is Dad home?”

  “He’s still on the treadmill. I’ll get him.”

  Mick reached for her hand when she started for the stairs. “No. Let him finish and take his shower.” He felt as if he’d received a fifteen-minute reprieve before execution. Fifteen minutes wasn’t going to change what awaited a
t the end of it, but a man grabbed onto it just the same.

  His mother had the look of someone who knew the news before the messenger delivered it. For a long moment, her serious gaze probed. Mick felt like he was fourteen again. He asked, “Got any coffee?” He didn’t want to have to tell his news twice.

  “Sure.” As he followed her to the kitchen, she said, “I was thinking of coming up for a visit on Monday.” She was fishing, but he didn’t bite, not yet.

  “Guess I saved you a trip.” And the trip after that, and the one after that, he thought.

  She poured them both coffee while Mick sat down at the table where he’d eaten his Wheaties nearly every day for eighteen years. After setting a mug in front of him, his mother moved to the pantry. She glanced around her, as if on lookout, before she pulled out a white bakery bag.

  With a sly grin, she unfolded the bag slowly and carefully, as if afraid to make any noise. “I picked these up this morning at Brewer’s Bakery,” she said quietly, pulling out two glazed yeast donuts. “We’ve got time to eat the evidence before your father comes down.”

  Only Charles Larsen could make a woman feel like a sneak in her own kitchen.

  Mick could see the questions burning in his mother’s eyes as they ate the donuts. His heart ached with love for her; she exercised rare restraint by not opening the subject that sat like a vulture on a branch over their heads.

  “What are you doing here?” Charles’s voice boomed from behind Mick, loud enough that his mother nearly dropped her coffee mug. It was so abrupt it even scared the crap out of that vulture. The subject his mother had so patiently awaited landed on Mick’s shoulder like thick bird droppings. He stood up and faced his father without bothering to wipe them off.

  “I’m back for good. I bought the Rogers farm.” Couldn’t get much more blunt than that.

  Charles’s face turned purple, but he didn’t say a word. He walked over to the kitchen sink and looked out the window. Mick could see his shoulders rise and fall as he took in slow, deep breaths.

  Without turning around, Charles said, “What about Kimberly? She needs a bigger hospital than County to have a decent neurology practice.”

  “Kimberly is staying in Chicago.” Mick decided to answer his father’s questions as they came, rather than try to explain himself with a long, and probably unheard, monologue.

  Charles turned slowly, as if he had to focus all of his energy into restraining himself. “Won’t that be difficult?”

  Mick heard his mother’s exasperated sigh. He said, “She prefers it; that way she won’t have to see me ever again.”

  His father’s eyes narrowed. “Being a smart-ass doesn’t make the facts sound any more logical. How could you have screwed it up with a woman like that?”

  Mick stepped forward, his fists balled tightly at his sides. “And what kind of woman would that be, Dad? One totally focused on a career you respect? One who wouldn’t rest until she drained every ounce of joy out of my life? One who wanted it in writing that I would never ask her to have your grandchildren? Is that the kind of woman you think I should hold on to at any cost?” By the time he finished, he was breathless and furious with himself.

  “Don’t be dramatic,” Charles said coolly. “You’ve always been even more emotional than the girls.”

  That was the way his father always undercut him, making him feel less masculine than his sisters. But Mick was older and wiser; he’d mentally prepared himself for this kind of attack. He didn’t blink.

  His father said, “What about your practice, your patients? Did you run out on them, too?”

  “Gary Gillespie is taking my patients—and believe me, they’re better off.”

  “I thought we agreed; you were going to give it another twelve months. You’ve made an emotional decision based on one incident. It takes time to get over these things.”

  “Dad, that ‘incident’ was only the last nail in the coffin.” His father always refused to name what had happened, as if that took away some of the devastating effects. “This has been coming for a long time. I’d stuck it out—” He almost said “for you” but didn’t want to hand his father that kind of power right now. He went on, “Thinking I would learn to love the work. I didn’t.” And he obviously wasn’t any good at it either.

  “I might not have agreed with your choices—”

  Mick barked out a sharp, cynical laugh. “Buying that farm is the first choice I’ve ever made.”

  His father continued as if Mick hadn’t said a thing, “But I never thought you’d turn into a coward and a quitter.”

  “Charles!” Mick’s mother shot up from her chair.

  A dead calm came over Mick at that moment. There would be no getting around this. He’d created an impassable mountain between him and his father. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I didn’t come here to beg your forgiveness, or to have you ‘talk me back into my senses.’ I finally feel like I’m doing the right thing—and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

  Charles was turning purple again.

  Mick turned and kissed his mother on the cheek. “I’ll call you soon, Mom.”

  He left without looking at his father again.

  Debra’s fury had her quaking to her core. “Are you trying to alienate our son, Charles?”

  She noticed her husband’s hands were trembling as he took off his glasses. “He is throwing away what most men would sell their left arm for.”

  “He’s made a choice that you don’t approve of. You act like he’s chosen a life of crime. You should be thankful he came back here instead of buying a farm in Iowa or Illinois. But no, you have to shred his dignity. I wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke to you again.”

  She spun around and left the room. Behind her, she heard him say, “I didn’t want things to get so twisted.”

  It was a damn good thing she wasn’t still standing in front of him or, for the first time in their life together, she would have slapped him. She would have screamed in his face, “You twisted it! It was you!” Their son had come to him not once, but twice. Charles’s ego couldn’t accept that Mick wasn’t heeding his every word.

  Yes, it was a damn good thing she’d walked out. She didn’t think their marriage would ever heal if she’d lashed out at him. Charles’s pride would never allow it.

  She grabbed her purse and left through the back door.

  Macie’s cell phone rang and the room filled with such thick expectation, she could barely move to answer it. Her heart fluttered in her chest and her insides spun like a hamster wheel. All that frenetic energy briefly remained bottled inside, then exploded when she jumped off her bed and to her desk in one movement, snatching up the phone.

  He’d said he’d call today. It was five o’clock, and she’d nearly given up.

  She answered as breathlessly as if she’d just run up the stairs.

  “Hey, girl, you working out or something?” Laurel said. “You sound out of breath. Or are you doing your annual Saturday-before-school-starts closet cleaning? Sometimes I think you have OCD. I’ve never seen anyone wound quite as tight as you.” Laurel could always compress at least three topics into every breath.

  A big bubble of hollowness grew in Macie’s stomach—she felt like a scooped-out gourd. Yep, that’s me, the anal closet cleaner, homework doer, honor roll maker… rule follower. Even her sock drawer was organized. How can a person be so stuck in a rut at seventeen?

  “Sit-ups,” she lied. She needed to do sit-ups, she thought. Monday, when school started, Caleb would meet the skinny girls, the hotties—like Laurel—and Macie’s chance at being more than his friend would go up in ham-curing smoke.

  “Sooooo?” Laurel dragged out the word.

  “So what?” she asked impatiently. She wanted Laurel off the line in case Caleb called. She had call-waiting, but what if it didn’t work? What if it rolled over to voice mail and he didn’t leave a message?

  “So tell me who the dude was at the fair. Were you on a date? Did you j
ust run into him there? I knew I should have turned down that babysitting job.”

  That babysitting job was why Laurel hadn’t gone to the fair. Macie had been so preoccupied with waiting for Caleb to call today, she hadn’t thought about Laurel reading the newspaper article. “Just a guy I met at registration. He’s new.”

  “You met him on Tuesday! How could you not tell me?”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s a major deal! I can’t believe you’d hang out with a guy and not tell me.”

  “I didn’t know on Tuesday that we were going to hang out. He drove by on Wednesday when I was outside. He stopped—”

  “AND YOU DIDN’T CALL ME!”

  “Laurel, enough with the drama. I didn’t call because there was nothing to tell.” If she acted like it didn’t matter, then it might not hurt so much on Tuesday when he found other friends. “He doesn’t know anybody and was bored. I told him about the fair and we went. The Ferris wheel broke down when we were on it. Now you know everything. End of story.”

  Unfortunately, that was the truth. Even when he’d dropped her off at home, he hadn’t made a move on her—not even a kiss good night. He’d held her hand on the Ferris wheel; probably because he was afraid she’d freak out and tip them over.

  “Kelly said he was totally hot.”

  Ah, so Laurel didn’t find out from the paper. Despite Macie’s maneuvering to not run into the rest of their friends at the fair, Kelly must have seen her with Caleb. Kelly and Laurel were both tiny cheerleaders. Suddenly, Macie felt like the ugly stepsister with the big, knotty feet.

  “He is.” No sense in pretending otherwise; Tuesday was only hours away. “Listen, I’ve gotta go, Caroline needs me.”

  “Call me back. I want details.”

  Macie pushed the End button. Deflated by disappointment, she sat heavily on the edge of her bed, then flopped backward. Her head banged the wall. She rubbed it vigorously, too depressed to even curse.

  She eyed her ceiling. Details. Laurel wanted details. Macie didn’t want to dish, because there was so pitifully little to tell. She and Caleb had had fun; at least she had—and Caleb said he had. But he didn’t kiss you. He hasn’t called. Maybe he thought the whole night was hokey and was just being polite.